Since Breaking Bad became a hit in 2008, I'm sure many chemistry teachers across the continent have been asked by their students, "Sir, do you watch Breaking Bad? Because the character reminds me of you." It's not difficult to figure out why. Few popular TV programs feature as much chemistry as Breaking Bad, and most adolescents, have only had one chemistry teacher in their lives.
After finally getting around to watching the pilot and subsequent episodes of Season One, I admitted that I liked the drama but was confused over the supposed similarity between White and me.
"Do you really belieive that if I had terminal cancer, poor medical insurance and a pregnant wife, I would resort to making illegal drugs and killing dealers?" , I asked them, smiling.
"No, but you're both chemistry teachers," was the reply.
Viewers in general turn to TV and video for entertainment, not educational programming. Yet with newer technology, the medium can be more idea-friendly. Personal video recorded programs and youtube videos, like printed books and online print, allow the user to easily pause, reflect and go back to check the facts and arguments of one part against another.
Breaking Bad is not designed to be primarily a science educational program. It's a black comedy centered around moral dilemmas. However, even though the program exposes the dark side of chemistry through its illicit drugs, poisonings and explosions, its scientific content is researched and reasonably accurate. It gets young viewers to realize that chemistry is not black magic but a mature science which makes reliable predictions about the behavior of matter. Here are two scenes that illustrate this well, even though the hydrofluoric acid incident is probably exaggerated, considering the quantities and reaction rate involved. (We'll find out for sure in a a spring 2013 Mythbusters episode.)
Soon after Walter White synthesizes large crystals metamphetamine, his former student Pinkman is astonished by the size of the crystals. Unaccustomed to meticulous preparation and proper equipment and unaware that they grow large if pure and slowly crystallized, he attributes their beauty to a special if not mysterious talent.
JESSE PINKMAN: This is pure glass! You're a god damn artist. This is art, Mr. White.
WALTER WHITE: Actually, it's just basic chemistry, but thank you.
In another scene, after being frustrated shopping for a low density polyethylene vat large enough to contain a corpse, Pinkman circumvents White's instructions and dissolves the phosphine victim in a bathtub with a couple of gallons of hydrofluoric acid.
WALTER WHITE: Bathtub? What do you mean, bathtub?
JESSE PINKMAN: That's another thing. Why do you have me running around town trying to find some stupid plastic when I have a perfectly good tub I can use?
Soon after, the upstairs tub and its contents fall through the ceiling.
WALTER WHITE: What was that you were saying about that “stupid plastic”?.... Hydrofluoric acid does not attack plastic, but it will dissolve metal, ceramic, glass...
On the surface it would seem unlikely that an educated man would find himself in the original predicament that led to the difficult choices and ensuing complications. What was Walter White thinking, living his life without adequate medical insurance and financial security and yet deciding to father a second child late in life, as if he was guaranteed to physically expire only at the average human lifespan of 78 or so?
It may seem odd, especially in the case of a chemist who knows that probability creeps into everything. An electron's motion cannot be tracked down to an exact location like that of a planet. There is only a high likelihood that it will be confined to a certain orbital, depending on its quantum state. When molecules react, conditions of temperature and pressure change the probability that they will collide with the correct orientation and sufficient momentum. But for an individual molecule, there is no guarantee that it will indeed react, even though the bulk of its peers may have more than the required activation energy.
Of course chemists and other scientists are not consistently rational in their work, let alone in their personal lives. They live like everyone else, taking chances, sometimes without hedging their bets.
After finally getting around to watching the pilot and subsequent episodes of Season One, I admitted that I liked the drama but was confused over the supposed similarity between White and me.
"Do you really belieive that if I had terminal cancer, poor medical insurance and a pregnant wife, I would resort to making illegal drugs and killing dealers?" , I asked them, smiling.
"No, but you're both chemistry teachers," was the reply.
Viewers in general turn to TV and video for entertainment, not educational programming. Yet with newer technology, the medium can be more idea-friendly. Personal video recorded programs and youtube videos, like printed books and online print, allow the user to easily pause, reflect and go back to check the facts and arguments of one part against another.
Breaking Bad is not designed to be primarily a science educational program. It's a black comedy centered around moral dilemmas. However, even though the program exposes the dark side of chemistry through its illicit drugs, poisonings and explosions, its scientific content is researched and reasonably accurate. It gets young viewers to realize that chemistry is not black magic but a mature science which makes reliable predictions about the behavior of matter. Here are two scenes that illustrate this well, even though the hydrofluoric acid incident is probably exaggerated, considering the quantities and reaction rate involved. (We'll find out for sure in a a spring 2013 Mythbusters episode.)
Soon after Walter White synthesizes large crystals metamphetamine, his former student Pinkman is astonished by the size of the crystals. Unaccustomed to meticulous preparation and proper equipment and unaware that they grow large if pure and slowly crystallized, he attributes their beauty to a special if not mysterious talent.
JESSE PINKMAN: This is pure glass! You're a god damn artist. This is art, Mr. White.
WALTER WHITE: Actually, it's just basic chemistry, but thank you.
In another scene, after being frustrated shopping for a low density polyethylene vat large enough to contain a corpse, Pinkman circumvents White's instructions and dissolves the phosphine victim in a bathtub with a couple of gallons of hydrofluoric acid.
WALTER WHITE: Bathtub? What do you mean, bathtub?
JESSE PINKMAN: That's another thing. Why do you have me running around town trying to find some stupid plastic when I have a perfectly good tub I can use?
Soon after, the upstairs tub and its contents fall through the ceiling.
WALTER WHITE: What was that you were saying about that “stupid plastic”?.... Hydrofluoric acid does not attack plastic, but it will dissolve metal, ceramic, glass...
On the surface it would seem unlikely that an educated man would find himself in the original predicament that led to the difficult choices and ensuing complications. What was Walter White thinking, living his life without adequate medical insurance and financial security and yet deciding to father a second child late in life, as if he was guaranteed to physically expire only at the average human lifespan of 78 or so?
It may seem odd, especially in the case of a chemist who knows that probability creeps into everything. An electron's motion cannot be tracked down to an exact location like that of a planet. There is only a high likelihood that it will be confined to a certain orbital, depending on its quantum state. When molecules react, conditions of temperature and pressure change the probability that they will collide with the correct orientation and sufficient momentum. But for an individual molecule, there is no guarantee that it will indeed react, even though the bulk of its peers may have more than the required activation energy.
Of course chemists and other scientists are not consistently rational in their work, let alone in their personal lives. They live like everyone else, taking chances, sometimes without hedging their bets.
